Shadowrun 6 / Skills

Verfasser: taranion | Datum: 22.07.2019 | Kategorie(n): General

While I am working on it, I thought I could write some thoughts about how we present different aspects of a Shadowrun 6 character within the application or in the PDF character sheet. We start with skills.

Screenshot from the skill page

In SR6 normal skills, knowledge skills and languages are treated slightly differently, so every type gets an own section on the screen. Normal skills have values and may be specialized in – on two levels. Knowledge skills are binary and need to get custom names. Languages are binary too, need custom names but also can be specialized in.
It is also noteworthy that since the number of skills is reduced now, that don’t show skill categories (Combat, Technical, …) anymore – as well as skillgroups, which make no sense in SR6

Section buttons

Notice that each section has two or three buttons in the upper right corner.
The “Plus”-sign is to add new elements to a section. The trashcan removes a selected element from the section (and is disabled when there is nothing selected or cannot be removed). The “Gear” sign opens a setting dialog with regard to the section. It is not always present, but in the case of skills, it opens a settings dialog:

Skill settings

Skills on the character sheet

As before you get a -1 malus for skills you don’t know – but only when it is a skill that can’t be used untrained. So we decided to print skills that either have a value greater than 0 or can be used untrained. The left column lists the untrained skills (all of them), the next column the ones that need to be trained (and only those >=1).

Skills Element from the character sheet

Relevant is the “Notes” column. Some qualities, adept powers and bio- or cyberware can have influence on your skill test (other than giving bonus dice) – e.g. giving bonus Edge. We try to collect those information and make a footnote that refers to the source of the potential influence.